1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the processing of text information and more specifically to the processing of text information as forms being filled out by administrative personnel. More particularly, letters, loan and insurance applications, for example are prepared at the computer work station of a teller or agent serving the public and the prepared item is sent to another work station which may be connected to the same or a different computer in the network for approval by a supervisory person. The system permits the supervisor to revise the variable portions of the document but does not permit change in the text body of the document.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art text processing work stations as well as data processing work stations have permitted an operator to compose documents using standard forms which are then filled in by the operator to create a letter, application or other document. These prior art systems include the Professional Office System program product marketed by IBM Corp. for use on large host computers and the Displaywrite program product marketed by IBM Corp. for use with the IBM Personal Computer. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,429,372 and 4,454,576 are exemplary of the prior art. The prior art has a disadvantage in that when an operator has finished a document, that document is a homogenous entity discrete from the shell document and data from which it was created. In subsequent revision the entire document including both the fixed and variable text must be handled as a whole for modification. Thus the fixed portion may be changed either willfully or inadvertently by an operator.
Further, the prior art provides no information about the nature of the variable text values that have been merged into the document. Though prompts may have been available to the creator at one computer, they will not be available to the revisor at another computer.
In the IBM Professional Office System, a document can be kept in draft form in the computer on which it was created. When the document is transmitted to another computer, it can only be sent as a committed document and the protection of the structured creation is not available at the other computer. This limitation is caused by the fact that the environment, that is the tables which permit the computer to create the document from the standard form and the variables entered by the user, are only available in the computer in which the document was first created. They are not sent with the document when it is sent to another computer.
There is a need in the finance, insurance and other similar industries, for a computer network text processing system which can make efficient use of the vast amounts of text information already stored in the computer data bases of an organization such as a bank or insurance company. There is also a need in these industries for a text processing system that is relatively structured so as to limit the freedom and flexibility of authors of letters and documents. Such limits are necessary to control the legal obligations of the institutions whose employees create correspondence to customers of the institution. Clearly missing from prior art text processing methods is the ability to forward draft documents to supervisory persons who may be at other remote sites or at the main office to obtain approvals, limits, and other inputs as well as modifications to a draft document in the same structured and controlled manner as the draft document was created.